Secret quotas behind medical schools’ bias against women and ethnic minorities | Letters

Your article brings most welcome news (Female doctors outnumber male peers in UK for first time, 6 February). It also reminds one that change takes an eternity.

In 1985, Aggrey Burke and I published a study showing that secret quotas existed in all the London medical schools which limited the numbers of women and minority ethnic students that they allowed to be admitted to study medicine.

A year later, we discovered that at St George’s hospital medical school, this quota was achieved by using “discriminatory” computer software to unfairly limit such students’ access.

This discovery was investigated by the Commission for Racial Equality in 1988 and the discriminatory practices were exposed, and they immediately ceased throughout the UK.

I write to point out that the change to reach staff equality has taken 40 years, equivalent to a generation. If only society could move faster.
Joe Collier
Emeritus professor of medicines policy at St George’s